[The Missing Link]

Provided all is truth, recent evidence narrows the focus of our investigation.

And Deku Trii, well... yeah, I'm not going there. XD

Originally Posted by Joker

(Really what the hell kind of status effect is that??)

It's a damned effective one, in earnest.

I don’t know what to think about RF just yet. He joined the game really late and he was the one to point out that the “burn” effect could be real. I also was off on Blake being mafia and I was going to FoS Mushi possibly even cast a vote and he was a townie. So for the moment, I’m going to have to re-read the last couple of pages because I skimmed through them. I have to be way more careful now that we are down a few townies. Another miss lynch on top of a night kill will make this very hard.

This is true. Rayman did give us an alternative theory. However, this theory HAD already been mentioned and explored, but over the course of the day it had more or less become unpopular to discuss whether the effect was real or not; we were talking about Blake's actions. So I won't fault him for that.

Be that as it may, Rayman took his (failed) eleventh-hour defence one step further, going beyond the step of "burnination-might-be-real" into suggesting that Blake wasn't Mafia as the result of that. Let's go through this quote line by line here...

Originally Posted by Rayman Freak

You're all so sure there can't be a burnt status effect?

A good point that had been discarded as uninteresting, but read on...

Originally Posted by Rayman Freak

If the mafia were going to use (or claim to use) a status effect on one of their own, why would they risk making something up and having precisely this kind of thing happen?

Stop the tape! Now notice where he's going here. He makes a very rational argument here, but he leaves out possibilities. He assumes that being burned is a Mafia-aligned status effect. Granted, I can't figure out why any Townsperson would own this, be the assumption is curious. Rayman automatically assumed we were working with Case Ib and completely disregarding Case Ia. Furthermore, I think many people had already pushed the point that Blake might be Independent... although given his actions, he was likely an anti-Town independent.

It's not a hammering nail, but it is extremely curious.

Originally Posted by Rayman Freak

I can't get past that, so I can't say I think Blake is mafia.

And BAM. This is where things get interesting. Rayman says that, solely based upon the fact that the Mafia wouldn't do something like this, Blake isn't Mafia. Now, granted, he's right... to a point, provided that the whole Independent alignment isn't there to throw us off, provided that... some alternate theory other than the ones outlined is legit.

Yet Rayman was absolutely mum about Blake's mannerisms. I don't know if anyone caught it, but Blake was online at VGF quite a bit during the past 36 or so hours of the day, yet he posted very infrequently despite the fact that he was going to try to undo the damage he has caused. My hunch is that he thought he might act erratically enough in order to wait out the clock... because Blake isn't a die-hard Mafioso (or presumably pro-Mafia Independent). He's not one that will argue the point till death.

Which brings me back to the questions pointed out above. Rayman hasn't commented about Blake's actions; I wanna know the answers. I want to dig into his mind and see whether or not his defence of Blake was purely naïve... or if it was a last-minute effort used to bail Blake out.